Residents of the Kenai Peninsula may have noticed there have not been as many snowshoe hares in the last year or so.
Area Biologist Jeff Selinger with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said it’s part of their natural cycle.
Selinger: “Throughout the state snowshoe hare populations cycle roughly on about a ten year basis. You’ll have very few hares, the hares will start to increase and then they spike and after die off sharply.”
He said the last peak in hare population was somewhere around the winter of 2011 through spring 2012.
Selinger: “It should be about another five or six years and they’ll start to increase some and then that usually lasts for about five to six years and then they’ll drop off again. It’s about a ten year cycle between peaks.”
The snowshoe hare is a top food source for lynx and lynx populations usually mirror the hare’s rise and fall within one to two years.
In November 2014, lynx hunting was closed on the lower Kenai Peninsula by emergency order through June 30,2015.